In its newly released “blueprint,” the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) charts the next phase of the country’s response to the HIV epidemic. In it, the largest funder of HIV efforts globally will focus on HIV prevention, new technologies, women and girls, and the most at-risk populations (MARPs).

FACING a growing deficit and political demands to cut spending, the Obama administration is planning to scale back US support for global HIV/AIDS programmes and is pushing to unload some of the burden onto other countries.

The shift comes at exactly the wrong time in the 30-year fight against the virus, activists say.

There are a record 34,2-million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS and the virus killed more than 4000 people a day last year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). In SA alone 18% of those aged 15 to 49 are infected, the data show.

Ministers of Health and representatives from the 22* countries with the most new HIV infections in children have come together to report on progress towards achieving zero new HIV infections in children by 2015 and find ways of stepping up action.

UNAIDS and PEPFAR welcome the launch at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland of two new initiatives by business leaders—the Business Leadership Council for a “Generation Born HIV Free” and the Social Media Syndicate to end new HIV infections in children.

The Business Leadership Council was started as part of the private sector’s contribution to the Global Plan towards elimination of new HIV infections among children and keeping their mothers alive (Global Plan). The Global Plan was launched in 2011 at the United Nations High Level Meeting on AIDS and focuses on 22 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, that make up nearly 90% of all new HIV infections among infants.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) today launched a five-year action framework to accelerate the scale-up of voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) for HIV prevention. The framework—developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNAIDS, PEFPAR, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank in consultation with national Ministries of Health—calls for the immediate roll-out and expansion of VMMC services in 14 priority countries of eastern and southern Africa.

WASHINGTON, D.C., 13 September 2011—The George W. Bush Institute, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) will today announce Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon®, an innovative partnership to leverage public and private investment in global health to combat cervical and breast cancer — two of the leading causes of cancer death in women - in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.